Suggestions for keeping students engaged during online discussions.
Teachers must do a better job of creating discussion questions that get student conversation going without much of the teacher’s involvement.
When teachers are removed from the conversation, students talk to and learn from each other.
By Kristie Burk
Excerpt from Schoology.com
Here are some tips to developing a vigorous conversation:
• Have students pick a side or disagree on purpose.
There’s a couple of different ways to do that. You can pick a topic and say this half of the group has to support this side and the other half has to support the other. For example, half the students represent Romeo and the other half Juliet, and they have to have a discussion online. We train teachers to use challenge to increase engagement. Students should challenge what somebody is saying, and if they truly believe in something, they should be able to defend it. You should know the other side of the issue and what the other side is going to say.
• Use a rubric.
It’s really important to have a discussion with students about what a good discussion looks like. In a workshop for teachers, I did an exercise where we all made a rubric together as a group. A few things you should be looking for are do students ask good questions; do they support what you’re saying with evidence; do they build on other people’s ideas? Research found that highly structured online engagement was more effective in facilitating critical thinking and interaction than discussions with less structure.
Read the article in its entirety at Schoology.com
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